


Postcards from Gotham, circa 1969

by Seiberwing



Category: Batman (1966), Batman - All Media Types, Scarecrow: Year One - Fandom
Genre: Cowboys, False Mustaches, Gen, Multi, Other, Side Story, Stereotypes, Superheroes, Supervillains, Witches, minor characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 06:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14327049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: Miscellenous side stories from Batman '66. This draws from the newer comics to some degree but rejects the parts that I don't care for, because the comics are also fanfiction that just got lucky enough to be published.Current stories:1. Aunt Hilda's family tree is crooked, gnarled, and working its way into unusual places2. A fear toxin deal at a shady motel between an evil cowboy and a post-grad in flip-flops. For Fred, this is just Tuesday.3. Riddler is contacted with a strange request from an even stranger fan.





	1. Auntipathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scarecrow: Year One meets Professional Witch and Insectivore Aunt Hilda: Year 1966.

"Hilda Keeny. K-e-e-n-y."

This wasn't her first trip to the police station for aiding and abetting but the young men were so polite here that it was hard to be angry about it. 

"We appreciate you testifying against your niece Marsha, Miss Hilda," Chief O'Hara said. She'd finally talked him out of using her last name but refused to drop the title. "Not many people are willing to testify against family members."

"It's nothing she won't be proud of, dearie. I'm sure she won't mind." Hilda adjusted the brim of her pointed black hat and smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress.

O'Hara shook his head and clicked its tongue. "Such a shame that she dragged you into the awful mess. You remind me a bit of my mother, God rest her."

"Was she a nice woman?"

"An utter saint."

And he reminded her of a young man she'd met on a boat to Great Britain, when she'd been willing to cross an entire ocean to get away from her own sainted mother, God rest her as far underground as possible.

O'Hara looked about fifty. Ezra was twenty-eight with hair as red as a sunset and a body beaten down until nothing but muscle was left. He'd played the fiddle and a few other things besides, and made the slow, stinking trip far more enjoyable for her. She'd almost taken the train to Ireland with him after they'd landed. Now she was in a Gotham police station faithfully reciting her personal details for the umpteenth time being booked as accomplice to the Queen of Diamonds, and while she couldn't say she regretted anything it was fun to dwell on what might have been.

"A woman like you should be enjoying her golden years," O'Hara had continued during Hilda's mental detour. "Playing with your grandchildren, maybe a little knitting. Not working for some greedy criminal--no offense to your niece."

"No grandchildren, I'm afraid, Marsha's all of I've got. But I do enjoy a bit of knitting." And who said she wasn't enjoying herself?

\--/

Yet again, Hilda was let out on probation. The kindly old lady misled by circumstances act worked every time, and Hilda was quite all right letting Marsha take the fall for her own actions. Besides, they were never careful enough to take Marsha's makeup away and Marsha always laced her perfume with some of some of Hilda's carefully prepared love potion. The dear girl was never in a cell longer than a day or two.

Probation meant community service and community service meant cooking classes at Gotham State University. They'd never let Hilda be a chemistry professor again after her little 'experimenting on the student body' incident but cooking was just chemistry one could eat. 

She was busy cleaning up after a lecture on stir-fried vegetables (which could always be augmented with a bit of properly prepared crickets, dears) when a thin silhouette flickered by her office. Hilda put her spoons down and ducked her head out the door to watch him as he passed. She'd only caught his face for a moment but it had been a very familiar moment.

Skinny like a rail, pointed features like a bird, and an expression of mild loathing for the people around him. Hilda carefully tailed the young man until he entered his office in the psychology department and shut the door behind him. As she passed by she could hear the thunk of him locking it tightly.

\---

"Marsha, do we know a Jonathan Crane?" she asked her niece a few days later. "Only there's a young man at the university who's the spitting image of your grandfather Jonathan.”

The beast in the cauldron before her let out a loud burble.

Hilda swapped the phone to her other hand. She cooed and fed Mortimer another handful of dead mice, praising him every time he swallowed one without making a dreadful mess.

Mortimer was the accidental result of leaving a potion in the cauldron overnight. His skin was a slimy green with a mouth of needle teeth at one end and a spiney tail at the other. In between there was a set of thin legs that stayed folded up against his body, giving him the appearance of a paper mache snake walking around on pipecleaner limbs.

Also he made the most adorable purring noises when you petted his nose. He was Hilda's little darling.

"The name doesn't sound familiar," said Marsha. In the background Hilda could hear the bustling sound of what she presumed to be the city jail;

"When you get out, you mind shaking your phone tree and seeing if you can find out who he is? That friend of yours with the umbrella seems to know half the city and I'm sure your host of admirers know the other half."

"I'll look into it."

A few days later Marsha, newly out of her prison stripes, descended into her basement with a stern look on her face. She was dressed in that mod style that women found fashionable these days, with a grey Swarovski-studded shawl and a diamond hair comb holding back her hair. For herself, Hilda felt that black never went out of style and a pointed witch's hat conveyed a certain sense of confidence and mystery.

"You were right about the professor."

Hilda squeezed a few more droplets of fluid into her newest portion and set her work aside. "Oh?"

"He's covered up most of his past and his accent is pure Gotham, but they have his school records on file at the Gotham State University office and Bookworm has blackmail on the dean." Marsha's smile was tight, a mixture of victory and mild disgust. "Mr Crane went to high school in Georgia. _That_ part of Georgia."

Hilda winced. Poor child. "But whose is he, I wonder." She went digging in the mess of her worktable to find a spare piece of paper. Marsha came to huddle over beside her while she sketched out a diagram of a family tree.

Hilda's ironfisted mother Mary rested like the tyrant she was at the top of the page. Below them were Marion, Sandra, and Hilda--though of course, Hilda was most likely scratched out of any family trees in the Keeny household. Sandra had only begotten Marsha by an equally tyrannical husband before throwing a rope over a water pipe and dancing on the end of it. It spoke to Sandra's character that Marsha didn't feel herself greatly affected by the woman’s death. Marion bore Karen and then went off to be some lady of high society, while Karen had cut and run before she was old enough to drink.

There was a reason Marsha had no interest in having children, and that Hilda occasionally provided herbal assistance in this endeavor. The Keeny tree didn't deserve to grow any further.

"Karen would be young but it would fit," Marsha said, tracing the tree all the way to the bottom with her finger. That would make him, mmmm, my first cousin once removed.

"And I do recall hearing that Mary had taken in some wretched child, gods and spirits protect his poor soul."

"Karen came home, dropped the baby on Grandma Mary, ran off again? It could happen. 'Crane' could be the father's name."

Hilda gave a curt nod. 

"What are you going to do?" asked Marsha. "The rest of the family's not even speaking to you and you're not speaking to them."

"Talk to him. The least he can do is not talk back." Hilda reached for her pen again and drew in a few neat lines connecting her Karen to "Unknown", and a final one below the both to connect her to "Jonathan Crane". "Besides, you're a golddigger with a penchant for diamonds and chemically-aided seduction and I dress up as a witch while I concoct potions in your basement."

Marsha grinned. "True. He might have turned out all right too."


	2. Overcooked Spaghetti Western

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fear toxin deal at a shady motel between an evil cowboy and a post-grad in flip-flops. For Fred, this is just Tuesday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As with everything else I write for this fandom, the weirder it is the more likely it's canon. Based loosely off [this tumblr post](http://aerialsquid.tumblr.com/post/171730631492/aerialsquid-enygmass-im-watching-66-batman) which wanted Crane dealing fear toxin to Shame at a motel of dubious repute.

Fred, who went by Fernando Ricardo Enrique Dominquez except when he went by ‘Ferdy’, ‘Hombre’, or ‘Amigo’, and who was ‘Frederick’ on the phone to his mother in Yorkshire, wondered how he kept getting into these situations.

It was blazingly hot even for July and the cowhenchmen were exuding an authentic frontier smell as sweat soaked through their bandanas. One of them already had his shirt off, making him resemble the kind of man who decorated the cover of a romance novel.

“So where’s this Crane rascal?” boomed Shame, swaggering through the gates surrounding the motel pool. Shame always swaggered, except when he stalked. Fred wasn’t sure the man even remembered how to walk without his shoulders set further back than his pelvis.

Shame was a second-string archcriminal with a spaghetti Western fixation. Like every costumed criminal in Gotham City he had a personal grudge against Batman for offenses mostly existing on his own head and a posse of spaghetti themed cowhenches he paid to follow him around. Today they’d followed him to a seedy motel at the edge of Gotham County’s border with the neighboring state.

“Si, Senor Shame, I cannot put my ojos on his gringo face,” Fred said.

“Here I am.”

The sole man lounging by the pool was even whiter than Fred, who was impressively white for someone who’d successfully convinced Shame that he was descended from Mexican banditos. He wore an aggressively tacky Hawaiian shirt, pale shirts, and a pair of flip-flops that hung off his narrow feet. Crane looked at them disdainfully over his sunglasses.

“I’d ask if you were Shame, but y’all make y’selves hard to miss,” he drawled. 

Jonathan Crane was supposedly the grand-nephew of Marsha, Queen of Diamond’s aunt Hilda, the self-made witch who’d referred Shame to Crane in the first place. When you did some backwards math that meant Crane probably hadn’t cracked thirty yet. Somehow he still emanated the vibe of being older than Fred, old enough to look down on him and wave his cane in derision. When they said some people had ‘old souls’ this probably wasn’t what they meant.

“You got the goods?” Shame said with a wily grin. “You best ain’t made us come all the way out here for nothin’.” 

Crane reached down into the bag beside him and took out a box. He opened the box to reveal several spray canisters and ran his bony fingers across them. “Aerosolized fear toxin,” he said, near to purring with glee. “One spray is enough to render the bravest man incoherent with terror. "

Shame reached for the box and Crane slammed it shut again.

“My payment?”

Shame waved a hand and the shirtless cowhench held up a duffel bag full of stolen cash. “We got your payment. But I want to do a little testin’, make sure you ain’t tryin’ to pull a fast one on us.” He pointed at the toxin, frowning. “For all I know, that stuff’s air freshener.”

Crane reluctantly proffered one of the canisters. “That wouldn’t do your little group any harm either. But go, test it out. I’m sure someone in this motel could use more excitement in their life. Just leave the cash here, so I know you aren’t trying to pull a fast one on me.”

Shame grabbed the duffel bag and flung it into Fred’s arms. “Hombre, you stay with this tenderfoot rustler. Keep him from getting ideas.”

“Si, Senor Shame!” Fred stiffened up and gave what could pass for a proper bandito salute. “I shall guard him with my life!”

“Y’do that.”

Shame swaggered back out of the gate and the other cowhenches swaggered with him.

“Your mustache is slipping,” Crane noted. Fred immediately reached up to press it back into place on his sweaty face.

“Gracias,” he said, trying to force the glue to attach again. He ought to shell out for the good stuff next time.

“You aren’t even faking a Mexican accent.”

Fred puffed himself up, full of national pride for a nation he’d never actually visited. “Do not disparage my voice, gringo. It was damaged in a deadly battle with the federales and my family’s honor will not be disparaged.”

“Are you telling me that your accent was shot off in the war?”

“Si, senor.”

“And Shame buys that. The man really is an idiot.” Crane rolled his eyes. He sat back in the lounge chair, lowering the sunglasses over his eyes again.

“Job’s a job, mate,” Fred said with a shrug, “At least if I’m putting up with it then some poor bloke who’s actually Mexican isn’t dealing with it, is the way I see it. ”

“That’s one way of sleeping at night.”

“Says the guy selling fear gas.”

“It’s only a side business. My university salary is about as high quality as the glue holding your mustache on.”

Fred smacked himself in the face again. Maybe if he just took the mustache off Shame wouldn’t notice. Shame was good at not noticing things, like how the ‘ritual chants’ of the allegedly Sioux chief that he’d recently hired occasionally diverted into pig Latin. 

There was a loud shriek in the distance. Crane smiled. “Also it gives me ample opportunity to find new test subjects.”

A shirt-wearing cowhench came tearing back down the sidewalk, with Shame stalking behind him at a quick pace. 

“The legs! So many legs! And the pincers!” the cowhench shrieked, dancing about as if invisible creatures were biting at his feet.

“Gas works,” Shame panted. “Fred, pay the man and let’s get a move on before Messy James does any more stampeding. Also, Crane? You oughta put some kinda instructions which way we’re supposed t’be pointin’ them things. Messy sprayed hisself right in the face.”

Crane rolled his eyes. “Of course. How could I make such an assumption that you’d know how to work an aerosol can.” He passed over the suitcase and slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. The other cowhenches dragged James into the car while the man sobbed and pleaded for them to get the centipedes away from him.

“Interesting response,” Crane noted, as Fred gave his mustache one last futile adjustment before it fell off into his hand. “I wonder what your employer might see, if he pointed the canister the wrong direction.”

“My guess, amigo? All he’d get is a hot spicy dose of reality.”


	3. Riddles for Loan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riddler gets a strange request from an even stranger fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I try to explain why John Astin was inexplicably the Riddler that one time on the Adam West show and nobody commented on the fact that Riddler suddenly had a mustache. Fun fact: they’re actually technically in the same canon, as Lurch shows up on one of the Batclimb sequences.

“There’s a bird here for you, Riddler.”

“Well, ask her what she wants.”

“No, I mean an actual bird. Not a girl. I mean she might be a girl bird, I don’t know much about birds—”

A large crow darted past the front door of Riddler’s hideout, sending Anna Graham into a shrieking fit, and landed on the edge of a chair in his sitting room. It croaked at him, wiggling its front claw. There was a piece of paper wrapped around its leg and the word ‘Riddler’ was written along the side of it. Riddler stared at it and it wiggled again, giving him a look that seemed somehow impatient.

“Oswald _knows_ my phone number,” Riddler grumbled. “Come here, you.” He extended an arm and the bird hopped onto it with a softer croak. He delicately removed the paper and unfurled it while the crow stood on the table nipping at the pencil he’d left next to an uncomfortably blank sheet of paper.

_Dear Prince of Puzzlers,_

_I hope this letter finds you well. I did not know your number so I sent Edgar to hunt for you. I have a business proposition that you may find intriguing. Please meet me at the Shelley Hotel on Edgar Street, room 13F, so we can discuss this in more depth._

_Looking forward to our meeting,_

_Gomez Addams_

_PS: Make sure you tip Edgar. He probably won’t leave until you do._

“Gomez Addams…” Riddler rubbed the paper between his fingers and stretched his brain around the name, trying to pick out where he’d heard it before.

Edgar squawked, and looked at Riddler expectantly.

“What do you want, a quarter? You don’t even have pockets.”

The bird shook its head, then pecked four times on the table.

“Four quarters?”

Edgar bobbed its head. Riddler scoffed. “Everyone is price gouging these days.” He raised his voice. “Anna, tie a dollar around the bird’s leg and send it on its way, then have Across and Down bring the car around.”

\--

Gotham was a little hot for Riddler right now. Though he’d rather have strolled in the front door of the hotel like the celebrity he was, the oppressive force of the law meant he had to sneak in through the kitchen and get up to the top floor in a service elevator.

There was no 13th floor, according to the elevator buttons. The floors went straight from 12 to 14, a superstition Riddler scoffed at. The elevator shuddered and clattered as it slowly rose. Riddler tried not to think of the hotel’s reputation for being haunted by guests who’d died after the elevator cable broke and sent them falling down the shaft at thirty miles an hour.

He emerged on not-14 into a dimly lit corridor. 13F was at the end of the hall, beneath a flickering set of nearly-dead light fixtures that served to make him even more ill at ease. Riddler looked over his shoulder, reminded himself that he was a man of logic and good sense, and knocked.

A Castilian man with a grin like a giddy hyena and a dark mustache stuck his head out, and immediately clapped his hands around Riddler’s shoulders. “You made it!” he cried, dragging Riddler into the room before the man could properly give himself an introduction. “And look at you, you’re even more impressive in the flesh than on the television! I had no idea your suit was such a vibrant green.”

The hotel room, larger than some apartments Riddler had lived in, was decorated in the Gothic style and gargoyles leered from above the doorframe.

A woman in a long dark dress was sitting in a plush armchair and knitting with dark blue yarn. At her feet, a boy and girl were lying on the carpet playing together. They had a set of wooden dolls in a neat little line, leading up to…what looked like a guillotine? With a very sharp blade, too. Next to them, a man the size of a bear had his legs folded and was politely nodding along to their childish babbling.

Both children leapt up as the mustached man called for them to come meet a Gotham celebrity.

“You’d be Mr. Addams, then?” said Riddler, awkwardly frowning at the children.

“Of course! But let me introduce you. These are my children, Wednesday and Pugsley.”

The children politely nodded and gave a united ‘hello, Mr. Riddler’, eyes shining. They were well-scrubbed and neatly dressed, to the point of being somewhat unsettling.

“And our family butler, Lurch.” Gomez gave Riddler a hard shoulder bump that sent him stumbling. “Kind of our own personal henchman, actually!”

The mountain of a man stood up slowly. He looked down at Riddler and gave a low rumble that seemed to echo from his throat down to his toes, eyes blinking lazily. Lurch took a shallow bow and stood up with a jerk before he sat down again, hands folded in his lap, and the children returned to their toys.

“Uh,” said Riddler, before Gomez dragged him over to the armchair.

“And this is my lovely, wonderful, gorgeous wife Morticia.”

Morticia gave him a smile that somehow contained both allure and threat. It reminded him of Catwoman, if Catwoman had an oddly maternal edge to her.

“Charmed.” Morticia offered her hand. Her fingers were long and mail, tipped with nails that were filed sharp but not flimsy.

Riddler bowed his head. “Likewise, Madame Addams.”

Morticia put her knitting down and rose, a smooth motion that made it unclear exactly where her legs were located. “Let me get you some tea, while you men discuss your business,” she purred, wafting away to the next room.

“Thank you, darling.” Gomez abruptly wrenched Riddler away again, towing him over to an antique desk in the corner. Riddler snapped up a pen from the desk so he could fidget with it and hide how antsy he felt. People were not usually happy to see him, not to this level of adoration. He felt like a celebrity amidst groupies. Yes, yes, it was exactly the attention he’d been dying for, but that didn’t make getting it any less strange.

“So what is it you want me to steal?” he said, before Gomez could even launch into his offer. Gomez merely laughed and leaned back in his chair.

“Steal? Only our hearts, and you’ve already stolen that. See, I’ve always respected the work that you do here. You’re brilliant, you’re effective, you’re Batman’s greatest enemy. It’s always a delight to read about you in the newspapers.”

“Flattery gets you most places, but where I’d like you to get is to the point. What do you want?”

Gomez clapped him on the shoulder again. “What I actually want to do is give you a nice reward – a week’s paid vacation!”

“Vacation.”

“Yes! More of a prince and the pauper trade. Though of course I’m not a pauper, the Addamses have plenty of money in the bank, don’t you worry. All I need is for you to set me up properly, maybe write out a few good riddles, and then I’ll handle the rest!”

“The rest of what, Mr. Addams—no, I don’t want a cigar, I just want to know what this is about.”

Gomez shrugged and took a cigar for himself. It looked pricy and Riddler made a mental note to steal the box before he left.

“What I’d like, Riddler, is the opportunity to be the Riddler for a few days.” Gomez opened the desk and took out a contract, handwritten with exceptional penmanship and dense legalese. Riddler snatched it up.

“To be me? Impossible! Absolutely impossi—” Riddler’s gaze screeched to a halt in the middle of the contract.

“Three…thousand?” Riddler rolled the words around in his mouth. He barely noticed how a hand popped from the desk drawer to offer Gomez a light, and only later would realize the hand couldn’t possibly have been attached to anyone.

“Including expenses, of course.”

“Of course,” Riddler said faintly. He read the rest of the contract more slowly. The contract stipulated that the party hereafter referred to as “Mr. Addams” would have the right to use the name, likeness, riddles, and other properties of the party hereafter referred to as “The Riddler” for a period of a full week, after which all rights would return to their original owner. Likewise, the Riddler would provide support for a full crime spree during the seven-day period including but not restricted to plans for nefarious crimes, riddling clues for Batman, access to lairs and henchpersons, and a cane with a question mark on it.

Riddler twisted the cap of the men between his fingers again. “Three thousand dollars to run around playacting as me. You really just want to be the Riddler.”

“It’s always looked like such tremendous fun! And I love your riddles, really, it’s so much better than watching Jeopardy. The children adore them.”

Riddler looked at the children again. Pugsley was marching the dolls along to the guillotine and carefully inserting their heads in before Wednesday tugged the lever to chop off their heads. Each decapitation made them giggle, then resolve their faces to solemnity and nod at the justice served to the bourgeois.

“It is, but most civilians don’t see it that way.”

“More their loss, am I right?”

Riddler looked over the contract again. He slipped the pen between his and chewed on it thoughtfully. Letting his ‘brand’ be stolen by some rich madman was ridiculous. On the other hand, three thousand dollars bought a lot of green suits and deathtrap supplies. Besides, he’d get all the fun of planning a crime and none of the risk of arrest.

Riddler began to write in the margins of the contract. “I have a few clauses of my own to add.”

“Please, please, add away!”

Morticia appeared by his side and set down a silver tray with two teacups cups and a silver teapot. The spout was shaped like a dragon’s maw, and the two cups were painted with grotesque faces.

“You will not kill Batman. Or Robin. Or do either of them lasting, significant physical harm. They’re mine.”

“I wouldn’t dream of getting in on your territory,” Gomez affirmed.

“Anything you steal, if stolen successfully, becomes mine at the end of the week. My plan, my rewards.”

“Of course! We hardly need the money.”

“If arrested you will not disclose anything about my whereabouts or plans.”

“My lips are sealed, _moy tovarisch!_ ”

Riddler raised the cup to his lips and paused. A faint odor teased at the edge of his senses just before his lips touched the liquid.

“Did you put something extra in this tea? I smell something besides bergamot here.” He slowly lowered the cup, eyes narrowed at Morticia. Morticia beamed back, an expression almost more unsettling than a glare would have been.

“Oh, you must have picked up Gomez’s cup.” She took it from his fingers and set it back on the tray.

“Really, now. You two are having some trouble in the relationship?” He gestured between her and the door to the other room.

Morticia tilted her head. “Of course not. What gives you that idea?”

Riddler smiled back, flashing teeth as he did so. “The faint but distinct scent of cyanide.”

Morticia laughed. “Oh, that’s not cyanide. It’s almond extract. The taste gives the Earl Grey a little extra zing.”

“And I never drink cyanide before 8pm,” said Gomez, picking up the cup and taking a hearty sip of it. “It’s a great way to get a good night’s sleep, not so wonderful when you’re about to do business!”

Riddler stared at Gomez, whose grin was still frozen stiff across his face. The smoke wafting from the cigar curled around his mustached face in an intimate caress. Behind him, his wife’s ivory-pale fingers curled into the shoulder of his suit jacket as if she were about to tear right through it. The thunk-giggle-harumph of the executions continued in the background, supplemented by low groans that sounded like the last breath of a dying man.

Riddler raised his pen and scrawled out his nom-de-crime in large letters across the bottom of the contract. If this was the kind of deal the Devil made, he could see why they held so much appeal.

“Right. Let’s start with the deathtrap. How do you feel about giant birthday cakes?”


End file.
